Redwood Curtain CopWatch, based in the north coast of California, is part of a larger movement of self organized CopWatch groups throughout the US. Our local efforts seek to intervene in the drastic rise of the presence, militarization, and violence of the police, and build support networks based on self-determination, caring, and concrete needs.
Human Rights Watch
Report Sheds Light On Dire Prison Conditions For Youth Offenders Serving Life Sentences
Submitted by copwatch on Sat, 01/07/2012 - 10:12pmBy William Fisher The Public Record Jan 5th, 2012
You probably know that the United States has more people in jail than any other country in the world. The staggering number is 2.3 million. China, which has four times as many people as the US, is a distant second with 1.6 million prisoners.
What you may not know is that the US also tops the charts in the numbers of youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in adult US prisons. The score? The world: 0; the US: 2,570.
Too Many Laws, Too Many Prisoners
Submitted by copwatch on Fri, 08/20/2010 - 11:39pm[article in The Economist!]
Never in the civilised world have so many been locked up for so little
Jul 22nd 2010 | Spring, Texas
THREE pickup trucks pulled up outside George Norris’s home in Spring, Texas. Six armed police in flak jackets jumped out. Thinking they must have come to the wrong place, Mr Norris opened his front door, and was startled to be shoved against a wall and frisked for weapons. He was forced into a chair for four hours while officers ransacked his house. They pulled out drawers, rifled through papers, dumped things on the floor and eventually loaded 37 boxes of Mr Norris’s possessions onto their pickups. They refused to tell him what he had done wrong. “It wasn’t fun, I can tell you that,” he recalls.
